New Zealand = Maori, New Zealand = Bicultural: Ethnic Group Differences in a National Sample of Maori and Europeans

New Zealand (NZ) Europeans show a unique implicit bicultural effect, with research using the Implicit Association Test consistently showing that they associate Maori (the Indigenous peoples) and their own (dominant/advantaged majority) group as equally representative of the nation. We replicated and extended this NZ = bicultural effect in a small online national sample of Maori and NZ Europeans. The NZ European majority showed a consistent NZ = bicultural effect. Maori, in contrast, showed an automatic ingroup NZ = Maori effect. These results are contrary to predictions derived from Social Identity Theory and System Justification Theory, and instead seem more consistent with a model incorporating the pervasive effects of culture-specific symbols on automatic representations of the national category.